Determining an Ancestor When There are Duplicate Names in the Records
I am researching in Legden, in Westphalia. I have a basic question. I think I know the answer, but I am hoping someone will have a suggestion that I might not have thought of to solve my problem. I am back to the late 1600's and early 1700's. During this time period, the records do not contain a lot of information, such as in a marriage record, you get the names of the couple, the date, and the witnesses, but no parent information. When there is more than one person with the same exact name, born within a few years of each other, married, or having children, how can we be sure which marriage record, baptism record, or death record belongs to our ancestor? I don't want to just add names and records. I want to be as accurate as possible, but maybe at this point I can't be accurate enough so I don't add any more generations? Thank you for sharing your suggestions with me!
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This is not an uncommon challenge, and so it is very important to look at all the clues in a record, or series of records. For example, in the case of birth/baptism records, does the couple use the same people as sponsors for each child? Or some variation of the same, e.g. brother this time, sister next time? Or perhaps the godfather is from the same trade as the father. For a male, he might be designated as Senior or Junior, not in the American sense of father and son, but to distinguish the older person of that name from the younger one. A male might also be distinguished by occupation and/or citizenship status. If the church register covers several towns in one parish, pay attention to which town the person is from. Especially for women, keep track of the sequence of children vs. the mother's age. Does she have a child every two years, is there too big a gap for the next child to reasonably be hers? Would a woman still be having another child at age 45? (Today that's possible, in the 1700s or 1800s it's less likely.
Having said all that, we have to accept that there are some cases where we just won't ever know the answer because none of the records give us enough to go on.
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@sylviaelchinger1 Thank you so much for your help!!!
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